


be one traveler

by kiki-eng (kiki_eng)



Category: Lost In Austen
Genre: Choices, Female Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-16
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiki_eng/pseuds/kiki-eng
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth Bennet returns to Hammersmith.</p>
            </blockquote>





	be one traveler

**Author's Note:**

> _Many_ thanks to calvinahobbes and readbystarlight for beta-reading. This is a much better story because of them.

Pirhana was settled on the couch, absently watching television when she heard someone scuffling around in her bathroom. She muted it and got up to investigate. As she approached, the bathroom light clicked on and shortly Elizabeth Bennet emerged from the room, her arms weighed down by luggage.

“Pirhana!” she cried when she spotted her and, dropping her things, moved forward to hug her fiercely. “It is good to see you again,” she said, her face tucked into Pirhana’s shoulder.

“It’s good to see you, too,” she said, before stepping back. “I was starting to think that no one would ever be coming out of the shower wall again.” She made a face. “Words I never thought I’d say.”

Elizabeth looked at her, smiling. Pirhana smiled back at her before peering around the door frame into the bathroom and taking in the trunks and bags piled there.

“Let’s get your stuff out of here and into the other room - might want to use this room again someday.”

~*~

“So you’re back, then - for good, yeah?” she asked, sitting on the couch eating chocolate ice cream with Elizabeth, who swallowed the spoonful she had just taken before answering.

“Yes,” she said, and, pausing afterwards, looked at her bowl a little before starting. “Amanda gave me a letter for you,” she said, and moved to get it.

Pirhana quirked her lips. “Leave it for now, yeah? I think I can guess what it says.” She ate another spoonful of ice cream. “She’s really marrying Darcy?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Everything is settled between them. I left shortly before the wedding.”

“Didn’t want to watch?” 

“No. I did not feel that I needed to watch; I have been to weddings before, and I think that there is a part of Amanda that is easier for me not being there.”

“She kept looking at you like she expected you to storm the castle while inviting you to come, didn’t she?”

Elizabeth paused before answering. “Yes. She issued repeated invitations. I think that she would have liked me to be there, for all that part of her seems to believe that any wedding which Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennet both attend must end with them having exchanged vows of matrimony with one another. I think that she is still incredulous at her good fortune, as I was for a while when I arrived here. Time will make her easy. 

“She tried, when we returned from Hammersmith, to arrange a match between us. She knows, though she does not yet entirely believe, that I would not go back and take her place for all the world.” Elizabeth smiled. “I much prefer this one, and I made my choice when I came through that door the first time, the day I learned that Netherfield park had been let. I do not regret it.”

“You’re really staying,” said Pirhana.

“Yes. She and Darcy gave me a gift before I left.” She paused.

“Antiques Roadshow, come in handy at last?” Pirhana quipped.

“Yes. She said that.”

Pirhana stilled abruptly. “Oh fuck, Amanda. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she said, and dove for the tissues on the coffee table.

She cradled her forehead in her palm and wiped at her tears. Elizabeth tentatively patted her shoulder.

“Oh God. Don’t,” she said, and straightened up. “We were at school together, mates, and she literally went to live in a book, set in a time before bob paper, decent medicine, or women’s suffrage. I’m not even sure you can call that escapism anymore,” she said, a little hysterically. “I don’t know what that is. Just, I mean, I know you’re from there, and I try not to think about how that’s possible, but- was there really _nothing keeping her here_?”

“Was there nothing to keep me there?”

“That’s-”

Elizabeth cut her off. “That’s not so different. There was. There were things to keep me there. It is only because there were more things pulling me away that I am here now. Let me say this,” she said, seeing Pirhana’s protesting look. “You told me that _Pride and Prejudice_ was Amanda’s favourite book, that she loved it. Her choices are not the choices that I have made, but I could have been happy marrying Darcy had I not come here and fell in love myself, with something altogether different- not a person at all. The choice I have made might seem as strange and terrible to my family if I could explain it to them as Amanda’s does to you. 

“You should perhaps read her letter. I will fetch it for you,” she said, and stood. 

Pirhana sat staring into the kitchen at the fern there while Elizabeth was gone, and contemplated having another bowl of ice cream. 

~*~

“Tea?” Pirhana asked in the morning as she filled the kettle.

“Yes, please,” said Elizabeth.

Pirhana put the kettle on and then slumped a little against the counter, waiting for the water to boil.

“Fruit and yoghurt?” asked Elizabeth.

“Fridge.”

Elizabeth hummed quietly to herself and started bustling about with bowls and cutlery, fruit and yoghurt.

Pirhana moved her bowed head slightly so that Elizabeth was in her peripheral vision. “Earl Grey okay?”

“Yes,” she said.

Pirhana nodded and went back to waiting for the water to boil. It did, and she made a pot of Earl Grey tea.

“You should call the Rosenbergs today, ask to go back to work,” she said, halfway through breakfast.

Elizabeth looked up from her tea, surprised. “Do you think that they would take me back?” she asked honestly. “I know that I did not provide sufficient notice when I left.”

Pirhana waved aside her objection. “Rachel loves you. She thinks that you’re a fairy princess or a witch or something and the Rosenbergs haven’t found a replacement yet, I don’t think. You should call.”

Elizabeth said nothing. 

Pirhana looked up at Elizabeth, who was peering at Pirhana assessingly. Pirhana sighed. “And explain and apologise. I _am_ awake, mostly. Rachel really does think that, still.”

Elizabeth blinked at her and then smiled slowly. “We spent a week watching Mr. Nowak from down the street and hiding from him. He is retired and has a small dog that he walks around the neighbourhood. We were trying to catch him ‘making contact’.”

Pirhana stared at her. 

“Rachel thinks that he might be a spy,” Elizabeth said with a straight face.

Pirhana started laughing and Elizabeth smiled.

“She’s great,” Pirhana said.

“She is. I will call, thank you.” 

Pirhana nodded at her and went back to her breakfast, smiling. 

“My plants seem healthy,” Elizabeth said a few moments later. “Thank you for taking care of them for me while I was gone.”

Pirhana had researched and then painstakingly marked out and followed the watering instructions in her Moleskine - where her entire life was written down and where Amanda’s letter was tucked for now, to be remembered - because the thought of living on her own without friends or family for the first time in her life and an apartment full of dying plants was too depressing for her to allow to happen.

“I’m surprised nothing died. I killed a cactus once.” She ate a spoonful of yoghurt and berries contemplatively. “Have you thought about what you want to do, since you’re staying?”

“I wish to go to school - to university,” Elizabeth said, “but I am not certain of the particulars of what I should like to study nor what I should like to do after - what I should like my employment to be.” She paused. “I am not certain of the process.”

“You can take courses, get a diploma instead of A levels to get in. They’re worth the same.”

~*~

“Figured anything out yet?” Pirhana cheerfully asked Elizabeth, who was surrounded by rather a lot of paper. There were booklets and pamphlets. Sticky notes in various colours protruded out of their pages. Elizabeth was fiddling with a highlighter pen.

“I know very well that I am not interested in studying history; if I wanted to spend so much of my time thinking of a past era I should perhaps have taken up Michael’s suggestion when I arrived of becoming a street performer or else remained at home.”

“Not interested in history, got it, and I’m guessing English is out?”

“It does not interest me.”

“So?”

“I am considering pursuing biology with either the ‘Science’ or ‘Medicine and Biomedical Sciences’ course. I should like to know how living things work and I could go into medicine - it is one of the possibilities that is listed under both of those courses. I should like to help people.”

“Like Dr. Rosenberg?” Pirhana asked.

“Perhaps,” she replied. “Perhaps not. There are many options. I believe that biology may be the correct path for me. I do not know where that path may lead, though.” Elizabeth smiled.


End file.
